Posted on 03/31/2003 5:20:30 PM PST by HAL9000
GENEVA (AFP) - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Monday that it had begun visiting a group of Iraqi prisoners of war captured by coalition forces for the first time since the US-led invasion began.The ICRC said talks with Iraqi authorities about access to any US or British prisoners of war were continuing.
Coalition forces have estimated that about 3,000 Iraqis are in a camp which ICRC staff entered in southern Iraq on Monday, a senior official at the Geneva-based aid agency said.
A team of 15 ICRC delegates, including a doctor and six interpreters, started checking on detention conditions and registering Iraqis held there, Balthasar Staehelin, the ICRC's delegate-general for the Middle East told journalists.
"As I talk now an ICRC team is wrapping up the first day of the first visit to Iraqi prisoners of war held by coalition forces," he said.
"The aim of our visit is to ensure an independent and impartial assessement of the treatment afforded to the prisoners of war and their conditions of internment -- we're talking about their protection," Staehelin added.
The visit to the camp near Umm Qasr is expected to carry on for several days, allowing aid workers to eventually hold private interviews with prisoners about their conditions and health.
"The ICRC is pleased to have been able to start this first visit and is committed to visit all prisoners of war, of all sides, wherever they are," Staehelin said.
Staehelin said Baghdad had so far not allowed ICRC staff access to any coalition soldiers it has captured.
But he stressed that talks with the Iraqi authorities were being "actively pursued".
"We have had a clear indication that ICRC will be granted access and indeed two ministers of the Iraqi government have publicly stated that they will respect the Third Geneva Convention," Stahelin said.
The Third Geneva Convention covers protection for captured combatants.
"So of course we hope that they can take place very rapidly, as soon as possible. For the time being no date has been set," he added.
Staehelin declined it identify whose forces -- British or US, or both -- were running the camp.
"The number of approximately 3,000 is an estimation of the commander of the camp, we will have a clear picture at the end of the visit," he said.
"We have already registered over 100 of these PoWs," Staehelin added.
Last Wednesday, a senior US commander based in Qatar said that US forces had captured "well over 4,000" Iraqi prisoners of war.
But Staehelin said here that the camp in southern Iraq "is the only camp of which we have access and we have knowledge".
The ICRC said last week that it was seeking permission from Iraqi authorities and from the United States and Britain to check on prisoners captured by both sides in the conflict.
Under its mandate as guardian of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the ICRC carries out private visits to check on the treatment of prisoners of war and to pass on messages to their families.
Maybe a few cruise missiles into Geneva might give these bastards a little more sense of urgency about the POW's who could actually use their intervention.
Doesn't Saddam consider all of his thugs to be a part of his "family"?
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